Why Diablo 3 is a bad game

[zinho73]

First, a little bit of history:

Back in my university days, I had a professor that gave me a B in an art direction work that was clearly more polished and better than the work from other students.

When I asked why, he said that I was already working professionally and was clearly capable to do more while the others made the best they could. He was right. I had the resources and knowledge to make a much better work, but I didn?t because I did just enough to be better than the competition. I was lazy and did not give my best.

Back to Diablo 3.

Compared to what we have in the market today, Diablo is not a bad game. You can easily spend 100 hours on it having fun, because the animations, cut scenes and action are top notch. The action is so good that, in my opinion carries the game on its back. All the other design aspects of the game are lazy, lacking in one way or another, misguided and sometimes amateurish. This is not easy to see, because a large part of the game is fun, but if you are a gamer, you can see through the cracks. It might not bother you, because you are having fun. Nothing wrong with that, I had fun with much worse games actually ? but In the light of what Blizzard is capable, Diablo 3 can be considered "bad".

There are numerous threads and articles enumerating a lot of the game shortcomings, but I will give you a much broader approach. In my opinion, two things killed what could have been an exceptional game: lack of variety and the real money auction house.

1. Lack of variety: every system in Diablo 3 is oversimplified. I have nothing against accessibility or some design shortcuts to make the game viable in terms of time or technology, but Blizzard butchered features of everything:

Areas are semi-random instead of full random like Torchlight 2;
Skill tree is linear and equal for every class;
Items are boring, with just a narrow window to be actually good. Also rarity of items means less uniques, less sets, less everything;
Story is bland and with no variation in following playtroughs;
No PVP;
Chat channels are overpopulated and not functional;
Public games are easy to get into but offer no customization;
Achievements are cool but don?t have rewards linked to gameplay (like Borderlands);
The quality of the artwork is uneven, with a lot of floating corridors in Dungeons and mostly well lit areas, leaving behind the cool and unique darkness feature of the Diablo series;
Skills are unbalanced and some are useless;
Inferno difficulty was poorly thought out as an endgame feature;

Some of those areas are more important than others and, as I said, it is quite normal to not be perfect in everything. But no one of those systems in Diablo 3 feels complete; hence people calling it a beta version, because the more you play, the more these idiosyncrasies will annoy you. In a game about repetition every road eventually leads to boredom, but if you cut variety you are taking the fastest one.

The core game is solid, but you gave players a racing car and told them to drive in the city in the rush hour. Talk about lost opportunities.

2. Money Auction House: Pay to win mode is not a game design tool. It is a marketing tool to take advantage of gamers lack of willpower and better judgment. You want to take a dent on the blackmarket? Let me tech you how:

1. Make a great game that doesn?t need an auction house whatsoever.
2. Make a in-game gold auction house as a tool for the people that want to trade anyways to be godlike or complete their sets or just compensate a real streak of bad look or just doesn?t have the time to put in the game.
3. Make gold account bound and not tradable. You can only buy in the auction house with the gold you win in the game. You cannot buy or trade gold. You can trade items as normal.

Is it a perfect solution? Probably not but neither is the RMAH with its infinity of bots, third market gold sellers, inflation and so on.

Also, the need to balance the game systems considering the money auction house is a hassle that are consuming your resources and leading your patches and corrections away from fun. Suddenly every little exploit is blown out of proportion because there is money involved.

I know that moneywise it is probably worth to suffer through it, because let?s be honest, you got a huge player base from the get go (thanks to the Diablo name) and the game is just good enough that a lot of people will still spend more on it. But don?t think that, when people question you guys as game designers it was uncalled for.

Diablo 3 is a bad game simply because you could have done a lot better and chose not to.

edit: I reworded the fifth paragraph in order to be less provocative. The theme is hot enough already.

 

[General Twinkletoes]

I think athenewins video on how to improve diablo 3 is really, really good. He's normally very silly, but the points he made make a lot of sense, and I hope some of them get implemented.

 

[zinho73]

The problem is that Blizzard put themselves into a corner.

They never planned to make huge changes in D3, as it wasn't supposed to be an MMO, so they are trying to make changes in the programming part of things, which are superficial and not to the point.

Right now they are trying to abolish magic find equip change, but are unable to do the simplest method - a second set of equipment that you could change with a button press, because it involves heavy programming and - more important - more storage space on their serves that are already stretched thin.

Due to budget reasons they have to address the hemorrhagy with band-aids. I don't expect any considerable changes before an expansion - unless the RMAH begins to go down fast, which is always a possibility. It is clear that a lot of players have already abandoned ship.

 

[zinho73]

There are a lot of good suggestions on the internet (and some are really obvious ones). But they are not compatible with Blizzard's initial "philosophy" for the game, so even simple ones will be very hard to be implemented right now.

 

[DevilWithaHalo]

1. Lack of variety: every system in Diablo 3 is oversimplified.

Somewhat agreed. However, some things that were simplified have been a marked improvement over the last system. I'm fond of being able to TP and identify whenever I want to, instead of hauling around a few dozens scrolls that take up inventory space. We gained some needed simplicity in core and lost some in specifications.

Areas are semi-random instead of full random like Torchlight 2;

I don't care about Torchlight; Diablo 3 isn't Torchlight. We need to stop comparing games to each other. God of War is/was not Dante's Inferno. They both carry themselves on their own merits. Diablo 3 has the same random map generations as it's predecessors, accept a few points aren't randomized like before because it's easier to code.

Skill tree is linear and equal for every class; (AND) Skills are unbalanced and some are useless;

I enjoy very much how you talk of both of these at once. Their skills have always been unbalanced, and they became linear because of people's complaints that certain skills were useless. The rune system was an interesting change in customization of skills, but I do find some more useful than others. This is more apparent in Inferno, simply because survivability is key. prior to that, it doesn't really matter.

Items are boring, with just a narrow window to be actually good. Also rarity of items means less uniques, less sets, less everything;

The random nature of items does confuse me at times; why do I have +Intellect on a Barbarian only item? But I do enjoy that every set item can and does have fluctuating stats. I don't see a huge difference from previous games though.

Story is bland and with no variation in following playtroughs;

Er... again, little change from previous titles. The story has a few random elements to it that come up at times, but the core story will always remain the same. I do think the story of this particular game took a dramatic turn from the previous titles.

No PVP;

Not all games have to have PVP, besides, this will be implemented in a bit. Not that it was or will remotely be balanced in the slightest when it happens.

Chat channels are overpopulated and not functional;

This is not a failure of the system, but of the player base. Although I have noticed a bug where if I'm logged into general chat, I can't party chat.

Public games are easy to get into but offer no customization;

What customization are you talking about? You're still playing the same game.

Achievements are cool but don?t have rewards linked to gameplay (like Borderlands);

Aside from banner unlocks you mean? And XP bonuses? Or do you want phat lewt instead?

The quality of the artwork is uneven, with a lot of floating corridors in Dungeons and mostly well lit areas, leaving behind the cool and unique darkness feature of the Diablo series;

That was a rendering requirement, not an aesthetic choice. Stronger machines can render more information. Why hide all the effort put into artwork? I like to see where I'm going. Might I suggest Doom3 if you're fond of darkness? Or perhaps Thief?

Inferno difficulty was poorly thought out as an endgame feature;

It was the logical next step given how the progression works in the difficulty settings; more numbers, etc.

RMAH

Not that I wouldn't disagree with the money grab arguments, but I find the AH in general to be an interesting idea. But this again seems to be more a failure in the player base than the system itself. Why in gods name would you pay $250 for an item? Blizzard isn't mandating these prices, the players are. That's why we have items worth several billion gold; because we're greedy pricks that continue to perpetuate the failures in our ability to responsibly utilize the system.

Do I think D3 is a bad game? It certainly has room for improvement. But the arguments I see against it appear ill conceived and poorly thought. I view D3 as an experiment, a sort of polished mod for Diablo2, not necessarily a full game in it's own right. In that respect, I feel it's been a success. But not all experiments go exactly to plan.

The biggest issues I find with D3 is it's random aspect to be honest. When you come across an Elite Pack that seems to have the perfect affixes to just dick you around, or when you've reached the point where perhaps 1 of out every 100 drops can be considered an upgrade. When up to 90% of the game the random aspect aids the player in progression, then creates an unsurrmountable wall of frustration at a certain point given the nature of the system. And the only solution is the AH; which is controlled by an inept player base. D3 is fun up to that point; which given the ease of the game, doesn't take very long to hit.

All in all, the complaints are fairly standard; "it's too easy/it's too hard", "things are too random/there aren't enough kinds of loot", "this game sucks/improve it this way". I have a hard time taking most of them seriously. But, all good things to discuss and learn from.

 

[SweetShark]

Indeed OP. It is as you said.
Blizzard accomplished a very good task to make Diablo 3 a very enjoyable game. The problem is even it is very fan to play, Blizzard make it very, VERY "casual", more action than an actually RPG, the complexity is gone, many technicals problems cause it is always online and many things I can list, but I am little lazy....

On the other hand, I want to give me the opportunity to show in this thread a Diablo "clone" that even it is still in beta, it is FAR superior than Diablo 3 in many aspects:

Path of Exile. I must say this game try to bring the original feeling Diablo 2 have but in the same time the game trying to do his unique thing.

Below is a post I wrote in the past in Gametrailers forums to that I said more details for the game [as I said, today I am a little lazy to write long wall of texts]:

Now for Path of Exile. Path fo Exile is for me I can call it a game with a good balance between action and preparation of your selections. Like the classic Diablo 1. But even saying that, POE play very differently.

First of I must say the game look gongerous!!! Even more than Diablo 3 I must admit. To think it was the work of a indie team, I salute them. Great work guys!
The camera is very close than the Diablo games, but give you the feel every encounter you face more "personal", especially the Boss fights.

Now the classes. There are six classes for you to choose. But this is not actually "true".
Do you remember the Skill system we had in Final Fantasy X? Exacly the same, but this one work much, much better. You litterally give you the freedom to customize your character as you like. Do you selected a Marauder [Strength Class], but you want also use magic? No problem! You just select the specific skills give you more boost to your intelligent! Very good work here too.

Now about the Special Actions. Very strange I must say and I am not sure if it is 100% accurate. For a player to get more special moves/magic/attacks, he take them from gems. If you find a Gem you must place it to a item with the specific slot for the skill to be acceptable. I didn't get yet a special moves/magic/attacks from the Skill tree of the game, so maybe I am wrong.

Gameplay. if someone get used to the different Skill tree and the way someone get special actions, it play exacly like the Diablo 2. To be more specific, the same "pace".

Finally the story of the game. The Lore of the game is very rich indeed. You can read many informations about the Heros and enemies to the site of tha game. Each character have his unique story to tell, even the most weaker enemy you face in the game. Also the writing is superb. I love reading them all the time, especially the story of Hillock. Unfortunatelly, the story of the game for me ia very weak to comparison with Diablo 3 and for a good reason.

I hope I helped why I think Diablo 3 even it is fun to play, the game could had been much, MUCH better.

Btw, Support the indie developers of the game Path of Exile, they truly deserve it.

 

[zinho73]

at DevilWithaHalo:

I will nor reply every point> Some things I disagree, but we are not here to win a contest but to discuss and your opinion is as valid as mine.

But I would like to clarify some points:

1. I'm not comparing games, but features in games that try to achieve the same thing. Torchlight solution to randomized levels is far superior and I think it is worth mentioning.

2. Yes, you can rationalize and give a semi-reasonable explanation to every point I've made. but my issue is that I should never be able to make so many points. In each and everyone of those points a little bit of customization and variety was taken away. As I said, nothing wrong to like things as they are, but Blizzard cannot act surprised when a lot of people are saying that they ran out of things to do and do not feel compelled to continue in the game. Yes, also as I said, this would happen eventually, but even Blizzard recognized in their forums that the burnout was way faster than they anticipated.

3. If you put money in the equation, you attract the worse kind of people: botters, schemers, thieves, greedy bastards. The community is a reflection of the game features, not the other way around.

Best

 

[zinho73]

OH, and on the customization of public games. In Diablo 2 you could create games with specific goals: trade, boss runs, etc.

Also, it was nice to see the equipment of the people in the lobby. And it was easier to find games with the number of players you were aiming to.

Overall, you could do as you please and not just be random thrown in someone's game that has a complete different objective at the moment.

 

[Realitycrash]

First, a little bit of history:

Back in my university days, I had a professor that gave me a B in an art direction work that was clearly more polished and better than the work from other students.

When I asked why, he said that I was already working professionally and was clearly capable to do more while the others made the best they could. He was right. I had the resources and knowledge to make a much better work, but I didn?t because I did just enough to be better than the competition. I was lazy and did not give my best.

Back to Diablo 3.

Compared to what we have in the market today, Diablo is not a bad game. You can easily spend 100 hours on it having fun, because the animations, cut scenes and action are top notch. The action is so good that, in my opinion carries the game on its back. All the other design aspects of the game are lazy, lacking in one way or another, misguided and sometimes amateurish. This is not easy to see, because a large part of the game is fun, but if you are a gamer, you can see through the cracks. It might not bother you, because you are having fun. Nothing wrong with that, I had fun with much worse games actually ? but In the light of what Blizzard is capable, Diablo 3 is objectively bad.

There are numerous threads and articles enumerating a lot of the game shortcomings, but I will give you a much broader approach. In my opinion, two things killed what could have been an exceptional game: lack of variety and the real money auction house.

1. Lack of variety: every system in Diablo 3 is oversimplified. I have nothing against accessibility or some design shortcuts to make the game viable in terms of time or technology, but Blizzard butchered features of everything:

Areas are semi-random instead of full random like Torchlight 2;
Skill tree is linear and equal for every class;
Items are boring, with just a narrow window to be actually good. Also rarity of items means less uniques, less sets, less everything;
Story is bland and with no variation in following playtroughs;
No PVP;
Chat channels are overpopulated and not functional;
Public games are easy to get into but offer no customization;
Achievements are cool but don?t have rewards linked to gameplay (like Borderlands);
The quality of the artwork is uneven, with a lot of floating corridors in Dungeons and mostly well lit areas, leaving behind the cool and unique darkness feature of the Diablo series;
Skills are unbalanced and some are useless;
Inferno difficulty was poorly thought out as an endgame feature;

Some of those areas are more important than others and, as I said, it is quite normal to not be perfect in everything. But no one of those systems in Diablo 3 feels complete; hence people calling it a beta version, because the more you play, the more these idiosyncrasies will annoy you. In a game about repetition every road eventually leads to boredom, but if you cut variety you are taking the fastest one.

The core game is solid, but you gave players a racing car and told them to drive in the city in the rush hour. Talk about lost opportunities.

2. Money Auction House: Pay to win mode is not a game design tool. It is a marketing tool to take advantage of gamers lack of willpower and better judgment. You want to take a dent on the blackmarket? Let me tech you how:

1. Make a great game that doesn?t need an auction house whatsoever.
2. Make a in-game gold auction house as a tool for the people that want to trade anyways to be godlike or complete their sets or just compensate a real streak of bad look or just doesn?t have the time to put in the game.
3. Make gold account bound and not tradable. You can only buy in the auction house with the gold you win in the game. You cannot buy or trade gold. You can trade items as normal.

Is it a perfect solution? Probably not but neither is the RMAH with its infinity of bots, third market gold sellers, inflation and so on.

Also, the need to balance the game systems considering the money auction house is a hassle that are consuming your resources and leading your patches and corrections away from fun. Suddenly every little exploit is blown out of proportion because there is money involved.

I know that moneywise it is probably worth to suffer through it, because let?s be honest, you got a huge player base from the get go (thanks to the Diablo name) and the game is just good enough that a lot of people will still spend more on it. But don?t think that, when people question you guys as game designers it was uncalled for.

Diablo 3 is a bad game simply because you could have done a lot better and chose not to.

"Objectively bad"?
Why I respect your criticism, I can't call D3 a bad game if I were to support your claim that it is more fun than it is a pain in the ass. If you have more fun in a game than you are frustrated/bored/confused/any other negative emotion, then the game isn't bad. If you have less fun, then it is.
So the graphics might be shite, the music might be shite, and the controls might be shite, but if you are enjoying it more than you are disliking it, it isn't a bad game.
It might have been a BETTER game if it hadn't fucked up, though.

 

[WoW Killer]

For decades critics have denounced the industry for paying too much attention to superficial features such as graphics, and not enough on the all important aspect of gameplay. With Diablo 3 we have a game that even the most emotive of haters seems to regard as having decent gameplay, but is then criticised on superficial grounds like its plot or it not being "dark" enough. It bothers me you can call Diablo 3 a bad game despite being fun. Being fun is the key indicator of a good game.

 

[Aeshi]

Areas are semi-random instead of full random like Torchlight 2;

I agree with this, but having it as semi-random does allow for designs more complex than 'random sequences of the 3 same square rooms' so pick your poison I guess.
.

Skill tree is linear and equal for every class; Skills are unbalanced and some are useless;

True, but Diablo III still seems to have a vastly better good-skill-to-bad-skill ratio than Diablo II, where 70% of skills were just 1-point steps to whatever the best abilities in your chosen tree were (Frozen Orb, Sacred Hammer(?) etc.)
.

Items are boring, with just a narrow window to be actually good. Also rarity of items means less uniques, less sets, less everything;

I agree with this wholeheartedly, one of the few things I dislike about Diablo III
.

Story is bland and with no variation in following playtroughs;

And this is different to every other Diablo game....how?
.

No PVP;

I'd personally say that's an improvement because it means you can have an open game without fear of some level 90 coming in to kill you and steal all your stuff.
.

Public games are easy to get into but offer no customization;

Doesn't the quest thing let you choose what point in the game you start in? I'd say that's more customization than Diablo II's multiplayer games had.
.

Achievements are cool but don?t have rewards linked to gameplay (like Borderlands);

I thought they gave XP when you did them (which would make them just like Borderlands?)
.

The quality of the artwork is uneven, with a lot of floating corridors in Dungeons and mostly well lit areas, leaving behind the cool and unique darkness feature of the Diablo series;

Diablo I & II's aesthetic was less 'cool and unique darkness' as much as it was 'Gears of War/DOOM3 several years early'
.

Inferno difficulty was poorly thought out as an endgame feature;

Haven't actually gone to Inferno so I can't comment on that.
.

2. Money Auction House: Pay to win mode is not a game design tool. It is a marketing tool to take advantage of gamers lack of willpower and better judgment.

To call the RMAH 'pay-to-win' would be to imply that the items on it cannot be obtained otherwise, while everything on the RMAH can (and has) been obtained from normal play. It's less 'pay-to-win' and more 'pay-to-save-time', no different to TF2,Tribes Ascend,Global Agenda and dozens of other games.
.

1. Make a great game that doesn?t need an auction house whatsoever.
2. Make a in-game gold auction house as a tool for the people that want to trade anyways to be godlike or complete their sets or just compensate a real streak of bad look or just doesn?t have the time to put in the game.
3. Make gold account bound and not tradable. You can only buy in the auction house with the gold you win in the game. You cannot buy or trade gold. You can trade items as normal.

1. As long as there is an element of luck (or even just item trading), there will be people who want a fast way to the top stuff, only way to solve that would be to make every item Bind on Account, and even then you'd probably just start an Account selling spree.
2&3. I don't see any particular reason why these couldn't be implemented.

 

[BoogityBoogityMan]

For decades critics have denounced the industry for paying too much attention to superficial features such as graphics, and not enough on the all important aspect of gameplay. With Diablo 3 we have a game that even the most emotive of haters seems to regard as having decent gameplay, but is then criticised on superficial grounds like its plot or it not being "dark" enough. It bothers me you can call Diablo 3 a bad game despite being fun. Being fun is the key indicator of a good game.

You missed the essential part of the OP: that is, when someone or some organization has amazing talent and amazing resources and the produce the merely good, they have failed.

IMO, the problem with Diablo III stemmed from the fact that the company's priorities were 1) max monetization, 2) getting it out the door by such-and-such a date 3) gameplay (in that order).

Edit: and actually if you look at those priorities, they were quite successful as the RMAH + always online DRM will make them shit tonnes of money, they got the game out even though the game wasn't finished (eg they didn't even test inferno before release), and the gameplay is good.

 

[WoW Killer]

You missed the essential part of the OP: that is, when someone or some organization has amazing talent and amazing resources and the produce the merely good, they have failed.

It could have been better, therefore it is a bad game?

 

[veloper]

#3 Make the game actually challenging for those who want it to be on their first playthrough with a different character class/new character.

A game that makes you pass out from boredom for many hours in, is never a good game, nomatter how polished or pretty.

 

[zinho73]

It might not be bad to you, but it is a bad performance on their part.

When an artist or any kind of professional performs below a certain standard, the end result is considered a failure, even if its better than most efforts.

The rage and disappointment that a lot of players are showing does not steam from nothing, they come from a expectation not met.

Was that expectation unreal? It could have been, but I don't think so, because of the points I make on the OP.

 

[zinho73]

I love the RMAH.

It is currently going to pay for my Heart of the Swarm copy.

I actually made some money out of it, but it is still not something that can be regarded as a feature that enhances gameplay.

 

[zinho73]

Also, the RMAH is a pay to win feature.

The way items are handled it is quite possible to play for a very long time without finding any upgrade (or just a marginal increment that is in practice useless).

One can argue if it is essential or not for progress in the game, but the fact of the matter is that you can pay to get an immediate advantage that will make you progress. A lot.In fact, some people that loved the game, like Force and Athenne said that the RMAH is a feature that makes people stop playing, simply because they go as far as possible with the power of their wallet and not playing the game.

In TF2 you do not need to buy anything to advance in the game - and you do not feel that you need to buy anything in order to advance. If you are playing Diablo 3, unless you are terribly lucky, it will come a time in which you will consider the AH as your only option. The RMAH bypass the necessity to even farm for money.

It is not so easy to see because theoretically you wouldn't need the AH, but that's not what happens in practice. For example, in the current game state, PVP is impossible. The one with bigger wallet would have the more powerful character, no way around it. This is not the case in TF2.

 

[Zenn3k]

Item Hunt, the primary driving force for the continued lifespan of the game, is BORING.

When 90% of the item affixes are borderline useless to your character, you've made a bad itemization system.

Moving primary stats to items was their first mistake, there should be NO primary stats on items, none. All the items should have an affect on the GAMEPLAY by their powers.

The key item stats should be things that allow you to directly counter the random elite enemy affix combos. Stuff that makes time frozen or jailed or feared last less time or not affect you at all. Instead of a worthless 2% reduction in duration, YAWN.

+120 DEX, +120 Vit, +50 Resist All on all 14 slots, is BORING itemization Blizzard. How did nobody see this problem in 6 years of development?

Add all the boring items with the fact that Blizzard seems intent on forcing its idea of fun down the throat of the player base, and its not surprising that Diablo 3 lost something like 75% of its player base in the first month of release.

I don't play anymore, probably won't ever again...likely won't be buying anything from Blizzard for a LONG time either, I'm very soured by this title.